Better than Worst

WA/SA

Working 9-5, at...

[waldrip architects/ s.a.] [architecture- los angeles]

Alberti, Sandro ‘Better than Worst’; 7 November, 2004 [text43]

‘WA/SA’, ‘Aloha8’, and ‘Working 9 to 5, at...’

The worst architecture in the world, I think. Is one allowed to ‘say’ that?

It was presented at one of A+UDs lectures for the current academic quarter (and comes bundled with an exhibit that will over-exalt this and more over the course of 46 days). Via Denari-esque introduction, the

project was presented as ‘systemic’ (affecting the entire system, rather than a single part). And there was something of the “continuous supple The basic diagram works, especially when ‘inhabited’. movement” in this definition. But the difference between what was here being defined as synthesizing and continuous, seems different from my own expectation (different in the same sense that Sanford Quinter’s writings at one time seem to advocate the disjunction of multiple and co-existing elements, and at another allow for “encroaching soft tyrannies,… an intimate and necessary complement to the so-called advances being prepared for us.”) ‘Systemic’, like any other adjective, is a matter of interpretation. The following description, printed last year by the Mercury News (San Jose, CA), echoed at the A+UD review, is a good starting point to grasp at the ‘raison d’être’ of the project: “The ribbons of laminated glass… have a constrained, almost mannered, mechanical regularity about them… The terrazzo-like panels… have the smooth sheen and manufactured proportions of sheets of Formica…”

If the project does not seem to blend, to coalesce, to synthesize in a continuum, it is because it has no intent to do so. There is a purpose to the constraint, the distance, the artificiality. A ‘metropolitan’ purpose that looks back to the mid-70s, before the explosion of deconstruction, before phenomenology, the theatrical-literary, or the historicalimaginary. A fragmented purpose already well exposed by the Office for Metropolitan Architecture (Rem Koolhaas), based on ambivalent life in the metropolis: In metropolitan contexts such as the high-rise, “the vast urban grid and the elevator couple to produce previously unimaginable experiential effects… (‘eating oysters with boxing gloves, naked, on the 9th floor’)… This machine (the grid-elevator-skyscraper combination) came into being without a single architect’s intention… It is… an avant-garde without a manifesto, which must then be written retroactively…” [K. Michael Hays; ‘Architecture Theory since 1968’; 2000] The 1970s (1977, actually) were not only the time of Koolhaas’ ‘Life in the Metropolis’ (full of floors that are not allowed to interact with each other in order to maintain

are fictions of fen-om: [www.fen-om.com]

hermetic fantasies), but also of other restricted interpretations on the relationship between vertical and horizontal. ‘The Dynamics of Architectural Form’ (Rudolph Arnheim; 1977), now a ‘classic’, discredits volumetric conceptualization as being too difficult, and proposes that the plan “has a completeness that no upright section can boast… (it covers the total range of the space in which man moves,… [and] shows a building’s particular place in the environment)… The absent 3rd dimension is not experienced as a missing component.” This might be true in a world (a time?; before 2004) where ‘men’ are not allowed to climb or burrow (and women are not ‘allowed’ at all), and people cannot utilize volumetric representations to perceive contextual relationships. It is fragmentary and isolating thoughts that lead to certain architecture (and the reason why it might be ill-classified).

The architecture in question, exemplified by a project titled ‘LOOP’, is not Mr. Denari’s, by the way.

Although it looks like Denari’s (toppled over onto the XY plane), it is Ron Witte’s (Witte-Whiting Architects): the new School of Art and Design at San Jose State University. Where Denari’s forms, as ‘is known’, fold up and down, Ron Witte’s fold sideways. What happens when this seemingly-simple change is enacted? (apart from being called ‘systemic’; when the folds shift orientation) It seems that, in both cases, the resultant spaces are “simultaneously figural and relational”. In the ‘original’ case, vertical and horizontal are connected, spaces flow into each other, and there is the opportunity to slip horizontally. Witte’s spaces, however, would be left crippled, flattened, exposed on top…

Spaces do flow into each other, but all the play occurs upright, separate from the horizontal; and any real opportunity of vertical slippage is kept in check by flat floor-ceiling plates (a tell-tale image is an interior perspective of the LOOP, where, even though our vision is allowed to puncture through all of the layers, it is only to bring renewed emphasis to these same stepping strata, and to the greater delight of a kinetic Calder-mobile). If Witte beseeches us to believe that the project highlights in-between space, we can only return to all of the aforementioned. There is little opportunity for ‘inbetween’ in this project (except to make it terribly obvious when one has transitioned, either between floors or between inside and outside; both ‘tweening’ experiences are truncated by the imposing floor plates; in vertical directions, most spaces are simply mis-aligned at the plate line, and when exiting, well, you definitely will know it, when the ceiling suddenly ends).

Quoted from the official project description: “Historically, architecture has always controlled geometry, using it to define forms and functions. In LOOP, geometry has been let loose to bounce, ricochet, and slide its way through space, coalescing and releasing relationships among forms, functions, and people…”

The ‘bad’ historical example provided at the lecture (already victimized by a Witte-Whiting Massachusetts residence) was the ‘malcontent’ Italian Villa (traditional ‘determinate’ scapegoat).

And the ‘good’, ‘indeterminate’ example would be Berlin’s Neue National Galerie (which makes sense when Miesian reflections and extensions are approached as Stan Allen has in his book titled ‘Practice’, or Robin Evans in one of his compiled essays, but not when it is a determinate plan-based approach that is extracted from Mies van der Rohe’s architecture). The LOOP bounces, ricochets, and slides, but only on flat horizontal planes. And, as José Quetglas once text-expressed fully, the imposition of planes “builds a segregated and enclosed space where every inhabitant will be excluded.” Ron Witte remains unimpressed by any precedent. He extols the virtues of a plan-based architectural approach. He considers that ‘program’ is “founded on plates… Program resides really well on plates…”

Denari’s Massey Residence folds on XZ or YZ.

The LOOP and its context, determined from 3d.

Notice how the building ‘spills out’.

“[The] circulation connects with the existing art building at several points…”

Well, yes, because the building is just the same old box (see… all the sections and elevations).

Inter-play.

“On the ground floor, the ribbons escape, forming overlapping landscapes of outdoor spaces…”

Even here, at the climax of release, one does not feel a sense of ‘escape’. Even without a ceiling plate at hand, the ribbons continue to support the field.

The moving ‘dots’ on Ron Witte’s video projections were nice; ‘entities’ circulating through his architectural plans. A bit of ‘Pacman’, a bit of ‘tech’. I think I’ll apply something similar to forthcoming interactive design.

A week or two later, SCI-Arc hosted its fourth ‘Main Event’, auctioning off star-architect napkin sketches. I seem to remember one in the past, when I had visited Dagmar Richter, back in the day when there was a Form Zero bookstore (see ‘Fluid Types’). It was next door to the SCI-Arc epicenter (the bookstore and the incident), where that particular ‘Event’ had been heavily publicized. A memory formed, then, a combinatory of the latest ‘Richter project’ (‘Strategic Landscapes’) and horizontal SCI-Arc publicity imagery (maybe they were actually subtractive in effect, because the recollection is merely one of addictive-nostalgia for SoCal swimming pools and garden parties). And ‘garden party’ is also the operative term to describe the first one of ‘these’ I ever attended (back in 1997, ‘starchitect’ chairs would be auctioned at the garden of Schindler’s ‘Kings Road’ house, pro-UCLA). And this is why I was so excited to attend ‘Main Event IV’, the dreamy expectation of a Southern California ‘garden-party something’. But, just like the Thursday Night Things (held by the MCA- San Diego), my confused and hyperactive dreams only lead to disappointment when reality is confronted. In the case of San Diego, after years of trying, I now have finally managed to sneak into town (that town) on the Thursdays in question, only, inevitably, to take a look at pictures from the previous gathering and decide that it will be 90% empty, shallow, overbearing. Back in LA, for me, it was just about getting a nice sketch. I love collecting these things. And there would be (was) Corzo tequila being served (they had the same leechee ‘elixir’ that had premiered earlier, Mexican Independence, at the UCLA Hammer). And so it was good to pass time, and make a study of it.

Empty: Of the thirty-something sketches being auctioned, people barely bid on half. Of the 100+ people there, only a dozen of us were bidding on anything.

Shallow: Two very different attractors were at play: craft and fame (we loved those pieces that had a strong sense of craft and authorship, but we would first and second wonder: “how famous is this author?”; I myself focused on a beautifully crafted piece by Ingalill WahlroosRitter, and was happy to pump the price up beyond the mediocrity of many other secondary pieces, but when it came to a similar price opportunity, I opted for the ‘queen’, an Eric-OwenMoss 3d-napkin).

Overbearing: It was a delight to snatch the Queens Museum of Art (napkin) away from Merry Ovnick’s greedy little hands, especially after her loud attempts to get me to stop bidding.

Better: That NY museum, perhaps, is what ‘not-worst’ architecture might be. Someone online recently blogged that, perhaps, molten forms are now out of fashion, since it has all been made all-to-real by our confrontation with 9-11. Beyond any particular rebuttal, that, however, experimental beyond fashion, is what is just right about the approach of Eric Owen Moss.

Spatial, cartographic, chronotopic, it allows for a personal, material representation of ‘work’

The fantastic mobile, and some framework.

Unifying materials in isolated forms.

Section.

Elevation.

...

within the abundance of ‘labor’, hiding in the industrial recesses of Culver City ‘et alia’, while life continues, for all (‘alii + aliae’). I am sure Dagmar Richter will clear this up, at the next A+UD lecture, ‘Montag’.

Main Event IV; living sketches.

Main Event IV; famous sketches.

In-demand bias; Ingalill’s napkin.

At the Alberti residence, next to an Héctor Navarro.

Sketch-form; Eric Owen Moss.

Sketchy-form; Eric Owen Moss.